Best AI Prompts for Brainstorming Sessions with ChatGPT

Quick Answer

We upgrade brainstorming sessions by using structured AI prompts based on the SCAMPER method. This approach eliminates generic responses and groupthink, turning ChatGPT into a reliable innovation partner. Our guide provides the exact frameworks needed to generate novel, actionable ideas.

Key Specifications

Author	SEO Expert Team
Topic	AI Brainstorming Prompts
Method	SCAMPER Framework
Tool	ChatGPT
Update	2026 Strategy

Unleashing Creative Potential with AI-Powered Brainstorming

Does your team’s “big idea” session feel more like a repetitive loop than a launchpad for innovation? You’re not alone. I’ve sat in countless meetings where the same ideas surface, groupthink silently takes over, and the energy fizzles out before anything truly groundbreaking emerges. The modern brainstorming dilemma isn’t a lack of creativity; it’s a lack of structure and the fear of judgment that stifles diverse thought. This is where AI, specifically a tool like ChatGPT, becomes your impartial, tireless creative partner.

To break this cycle, we need more than just a blank page; we need a proven framework. That’s why this guide is built around the SCAMPER method, a time-tested innovation technique that forces you to look at a problem from seven distinct angles. It’s a systematic approach to generating novel variations by prompting you to:

Substitute: What can you replace or swap?
Combine: What can you merge with another idea?
Adapt: What can you adapt from another context?
Modify: How can you change the shape, size, or attributes?
Put to another use: How can it be used in a completely different way?
Eliminate: What can you remove or simplify?
Reverse: What if you did the exact opposite?

In this guide, you’ll get a collection of actionable SCAMPER prompts designed to supercharge your sessions with ChatGPT. We’ll move beyond theory and provide real-world examples and a step-by-step process to transform your brainstorming from a chore into your most powerful tool for innovation.

The Foundation: Why SCAMPER is the Perfect Framework for AI

Ever feel like you’re shouting into the void when asking an AI for ideas? You type “brainstorm some new marketing ideas for my coffee shop,” and you get back a list so generic it could apply to a laundromat. It’s a common frustration. The problem isn’t the AI’s lack of intelligence; it’s the lack of a thinking partner. You’re giving it a blank canvas when it actually thrives with a clear blueprint. This is where a structured approach like SCAMPER transforms your results, turning a simple text box into a powerful engine for genuine innovation.

The SCAMPER method, developed by Bob Eberle, is a creative thinking technique that uses a set of seven action-oriented prompts to spark new ideas. Think of it as a checklist that forces you to examine a problem or product from seven different angles, ensuring you don’t miss any obvious—or not-so-obvious—opportunities. When you apply this structure to a Large Language Model (LLM) like ChatGPT, you’re no longer just asking for ideas; you’re directing a sophisticated brainstorming session.

Deconstructing SCAMPER: Your 7-Step Innovation Engine

Each letter in SCAMPER represents a specific prompt. By feeding these prompts to ChatGPT, you guide its generative process away from clichés and toward novel, actionable variations. Here’s a breakdown of each letter and the powerful questions it unlocks:

S - Substitute: What elements can you replace or swap? This could be a material, a process, a person, or even a price point. For a coffee shop, you might ask, “What can we substitute for our traditional paper cups to create a more premium experience?” This could lead to ideas like branded reusable mugs or partnerships with local artisans for ceramic cups.
C - Combine: What can you merge or bring together? This is about combining two or more ideas, features, or services to create something new. A prompt like, “How can we combine our coffee service with a co-working space model?” could generate concepts like “Caffeine & Code” evening events or subscription-based “all-day work passes.”
A - Adapt: What ideas from other contexts can you adapt to your own? Look at what’s working elsewhere and how it could be applied to your situation. “How can we adapt the ‘freemium’ software model to our menu?” might lead to a “try a small sample of our new roast for free with any purchase” promotion.
M - Modify (or Magnify/Minify): How can you change the shape, look, or feel of your product? Can you exaggerate a feature or minimize it? “How can we modify our store layout to emphasize the ‘slow living’ aspect?” could result in creating a dedicated reading nook or removing the Wi-Fi password to encourage conversation.
P - Put to Another Use: How can your product or service be used in a completely different way or for a different audience? “What are other ways our coffee beans could be used, besides brewing?” This might lead to ideas for coffee-scented candles, body scrubs, or even a baking ingredient partnership.
E - Eliminate: What can you remove or simplify? This is about streamlining and focusing on the core value. “What elements of our ordering process can we eliminate to reduce customer wait times?” This could lead to a mobile pre-ordering app or a simplified menu with fewer choices.
R - Reverse (or Rearrange): What would happen if you reversed the order of your process or flipped your business model on its head? “What if we reversed our business model and let customers set the price for our ‘community blend’?” This could be a fascinating experiment in value perception and social goodwill.

The Synergy of Structure and AI: Why SCAMPER Tames the LLM

Large Language Models are pattern-matching powerhouses. Without specific direction, they will always default to the most statistically probable, and therefore most generic, patterns. Asking for “new ideas” is like asking a chef to “make some food”—you’ll likely get something edible, but probably not a culinary masterpiece. A structured framework like SCAMPER acts as a creative constraint, which paradoxically, unlocks higher-quality, more diverse outputs.

By using SCAMPER, you are essentially programming the AI’s thought process. You’re forcing it to explore the entire solution space instead of just the well-trodden center. This prevents the “echo chamber” effect where the AI just rephrases the same few ideas. More importantly, it builds a foundation of trust. When you see the AI responding to specific, nuanced commands like “Reverse the customer journey for a subscription box service,” you begin to understand its capabilities as a creative partner, not just a search engine. This is the core of effective AI-powered brainstorming: you provide the strategic scaffolding, and the AI provides the generative horsepower.

Setting Up Your ChatGPT “Brainstorming Partner”: Actionable Priming Tips

To get the most out of a SCAMPER session, you can’t just jump straight into the prompts. You need to prime the pump and set the stage. Think of it as briefing a creative consultant before a workshop. This initial setup is a “golden nugget” that many people skip, but it dramatically improves the relevance and quality of the output.

Here’s a simple, two-step process to set up your ChatGPT session for optimal results:

Define the Persona and Context: Start by telling the AI who you want it to be and what the project is. This is more powerful than you might think. For example:

“I want you to act as an expert creative director and innovation strategist with 20 years of experience in the food and beverage industry. You are known for generating practical yet highly original ideas. We are going to brainstorm new product and service concepts for a local, independent coffee shop called ‘The Daily Grind,’ which is known for its high-quality beans and cozy atmosphere but is struggling to compete with larger chains.”
State the Goal and Method: Clearly outline the task and the framework you’ll be using. This tells the AI exactly what kind of output you expect.

“Our goal is to generate at least three new, actionable ideas that will increase customer loyalty and attract a new evening crowd. To do this, we will use the SCAMPER method. I will provide you with the core concept, and you will use the SCAMPER framework to generate creative questions and potential ideas in response. Let’s begin.”

By following this priming process, you transform ChatGPT from a generic tool into a specialized brainstorming partner that understands your specific goals and is ready to engage in a structured, creative dialogue.

Mastering the “S”: Substitute & Combine Prompts for Novelty

When you’re staring at a problem that feels completely stuck, the solution often isn’t to push harder in the same direction. It’s to change the components of the problem itself. The first two letters of the SCAMPER framework—Substitute and Combine—are your most powerful tools for this. They force a fundamental shift in perspective, moving you from incremental tweaks to genuine innovation. This is where you break the mental models that keep your ideas trapped in the familiar.

The Power of Substitution: Swapping Your Way to Breakthroughs

Substitution is the art of asking, “What if we replaced this core element with something else?” It’s a deceptively simple question that can dismantle a product, service, or process and reveal entirely new possibilities. We often become so accustomed to the “way things are done” that we forget the original choices were just that—choices. The plastic handle on your coffee mug? A choice. The subscription fee for your software? A choice. The steel wool inside your scrubber? A choice.

Let’s take that hypothetical coffee mug. Most brainstorming sessions would focus on changing the color or adding a new logo. A substitution-based approach is far more radical. Instead of just asking for new colors, you use a prompt that forces a systematic analysis of its physical components.

Prompt Example:

“I have a product: a standard ceramic coffee mug with a C-shaped handle. Generate a list of 10 alternative materials for the mug’s body and the unique benefits and drawbacks of each. Focus on materials that are not typically used for mugs.”

This prompt does more than just generate a list. It asks for a trade-off analysis (benefits and drawbacks) and explicitly pushes against convention (“not typically used”). The AI might suggest materials like:

Bamboo Fiber Composite: Lightweight, sustainable, and naturally antimicrobial. Drawback: May not retain heat as long as ceramic.
Food-Grade Silicone: Collapsible for travel, unbreakable. Drawback: Can sometimes retain odors or flavors.
Seasoned Cast Iron: Superior heat retention for slow-sipping, can be used over a campfire. Drawback: Extremely heavy and requires specific care to prevent rust.
Cork: Extremely lightweight, insulating, and provides a unique tactile experience. Drawback: Porous and difficult to clean thoroughly.

Suddenly, you’re not just designing a mug; you’re designing for a specific user need: the backpacker (cast iron), the minimalist commuter (silicone), the eco-conscious office worker (bamboo). This is the golden nugget of substitution: you’re not just swapping materials; you’re swapping the user context and creating new market niches from a simple product.

The Art of Combination: Merging Worlds for True Innovation

If substitution is about swapping parts, combination is about merging entire systems. This is the engine of disruptive innovation. History’s greatest breakthroughs often come from smashing together two previously unrelated concepts. Think of the telephone and the computer, which gave us the smartphone. Or the concept of a taxi and a decentralized network, which gave us Uber.

The goal here is to force a collision between disparate ideas to create something the market has never seen. This is how you break out of industry-standard thinking, because you’re literally importing a model from a completely different industry.

Prompt Example:

“Combine the business model of a subscription service like Netflix with the user experience of a short-form video app like TikTok to create a new concept for a fitness app. Describe the core features, the user’s journey, and how the combination creates a unique value proposition.”

This prompt is brilliant because it doesn’t ask for “a better fitness app.” It demands a synthesis of two powerful, but unrelated, psychological hooks: the deep, curated library of Netflix and the addictive, algorithm-driven “flow state” of TikTok. The AI would need to reason through this combination, producing a concept that might look like this:

Core Feature: The “Fitness Series.” Instead of a library of one-off workouts, the app offers “series” (e.g., “The 30-Day Core Challenge,” “Yoga for Runners”). You subscribe to a series, not just the app.
User Experience: The “Workout Feed.” Between series, the app presents a TikTok-style vertical feed of micro-workouts , expert tips, or form-checks. The algorithm learns what you engage with and serves more of it.
Value Proposition: It solves two problems at once. The “series” model provides the structure and long-term commitment that most fitness apps lack (the Netflix element), while the “feed” prevents boredom and keeps users engaged daily with low-friction content (the TikTok element).

By forcing these two concepts to coexist, you’ve created a new hybrid that has no direct competitors. You’ve moved beyond “a fitness app with videos” into a completely new category of “structured entertainment for your health.”

From Components to Concepts: Weaving Substitution and Combination Together

The real magic happens when you start chaining these techniques. You don’t just substitute a material; you substitute a material and then combine that new component with an entirely different user experience. For instance, what if you used the silicone (substitution) mug and combined it with a smart-coaster technology that tracks your caffeine intake and syncs with your calendar to suggest the optimal time for your next coffee?

This iterative process is the key. Start with substitution to break down your idea into its atomic parts. Then, use combination to reassemble those parts with elements from outside your industry. This two-step dance is how you move from simple ideation to genuine, market-defining novelty.

Mastering the “A & M”: Adapt & Modify Prompts for Enhancement

Have you ever wondered why a brilliant strategy in one industry falls flat when copied directly into another? The secret isn’t the idea itself, but its context. True innovation often comes from taking a proven concept and skillfully adapting its core principle to a new environment. This is where the “A” in SCAMPER—Adapt—becomes your most powerful tool for cross-pollinating ideas. Instead of reinventing the wheel, you’re putting a new tire on a perfectly good chassis.

This is where your expertise as a prompt engineer becomes critical. You’re not just asking for ideas; you’re directing a sophisticated pattern-matching engine to find connections you would never see on your own. By forcing ChatGPT to look outside your immediate domain, you bypass the industry’s collective “groupthink” and generate solutions that feel both fresh and surprisingly logical.

The Cross-Industry Heist: Stealing Brilliant Ideas

Think of this as a creative heist. You’re identifying a masterfully executed strategy in a completely unrelated field and adapting its DNA to your own challenge. The goal is to find the underlying principle and translate it, not to copy the surface-level tactics.

Here’s how to structure the prompt for maximum effect:

Prompt Example: “I run a subscription-based meal kit service. Adapt the ‘gamification’ and ‘status level’ mechanics from the airline industry’s frequent flyer programs. Brainstorm three specific loyalty program ideas that would increase customer retention and order frequency for my meal kit service. For each idea, explain the core principle you borrowed and how it translates to the food context.”

This prompt is powerful because it’s specific. It names the source industry (airlines), the exact mechanics (gamification, status levels), and the desired business outcome (increased retention and frequency). You’re not asking “what’s a good loyalty program?”; you’re asking “how can I make my customers feel like VIP travelers, but for dinner?”

A potential output might be a “Mile High Chef” program, where customers earn “flights” (orders) to unlock new “destinations” (exclusive regional recipes or chef collaborations). This is a direct translation of a proven model, creating a sense of journey and achievement that a simple discount model could never achieve.

Turning Up the Dial: Maxify and Minify for New Markets

The second half of this section focuses on the “M”—Modify. Specifically, we’re talking about Modifying for Magnitude. This is a deceptively simple but incredibly effective technique for exploring the full potential of a single idea. You take your core concept and push it to its absolute extremes in both directions.

This isn’t just about making something bigger or smaller; it’s about fundamentally changing its value proposition and target audience. It’s a mental exercise that forces you to consider the “what if” scenarios that unlock entirely new market segments.

To do this effectively, you need to provide the AI with your core value proposition first. Don’t just ask it to brainstorm a premium and budget version of nothing. Give it the raw material.

Prompt Example: “First, let’s establish our core feature. Our company offers a 1-hour online writing workshop for professionals. Now, let’s modify this for magnitude.

Part 1: MAXIFY (The Premium Version): Brainstorm a ‘high-end’ or ‘concierge’ version of this workshop. What features would you add to justify a 10x price increase? Who is the target audience for this premium offering?

Part 2: MINIFY (The Budget Version): Now, brainstorm a ‘lite’ or ‘mini’ version. How could you strip this down to its absolute essential core to serve a completely different, price-sensitive market? What would you keep, and what would you cut?”

The Maxify output might suggest a multi-day executive retreat with one-on-one coaching, personalized feedback on real-world documents, and a lifetime access community. This targets C-suite executives who value time and exclusivity over cost.

The Minify output could lead to a 15-minute, self-paced video tutorial on a single grammar rule, sold for $5. This targets a massive market of students or non-native speakers who just need a quick, cheap fix.

Golden Nugget: The real magic happens when you analyze why the Maxify and Minify versions are different. The premium version adds human interaction and exclusivity, while the budget version removes it entirely. This insight reveals what your customers truly value at different price points. It tells you that for your core product, the sweet spot might be a balance of automated content and accessible support, a position you discovered only by exploring the extremes.

By mastering these two approaches—Adapting from other worlds and Modifying for magnitude—you transform ChatGPT from a simple idea generator into a strategic exploration partner. You can uncover blue oceans of opportunity and find new revenue streams hiding in plain sight, all by learning to ask the right kind of expansive, boundary-pushing questions.

Mastering the “P, E, & R”: Put to Another Use, Eliminate & Reverse Prompts

You’ve likely been in a meeting where someone suggests a “bold” new idea, only for it to be the same approach you tried last year, just with a different name. True innovation isn’t about adding more complexity; it’s often about seeing the familiar in an unfamiliar way. The SCAMPER framework’s remaining three letters—Put to Another Use, Eliminate, and Reverse—are your tools for breaking these ingrained patterns. They force you to question the very purpose, components, and sequence of your ideas. This is where you move from incremental improvement to exponential thinking.

Finding New Uses & Untapped Audiences

Every product or service has a “primary” purpose it was built for, but its secondary and tertiary uses are often where the biggest market opportunities hide. The classic example is baking soda: created as a leavening agent, it now generates millions in revenue as a refrigerator deodorizer and cleaning abrasive. The challenge is that our brains are wired to associate objects with their intended function. This is where prompting becomes essential. By instructing ChatGPT to actively ignore the obvious, you force it to cross-pollinate concepts from unrelated domains, revealing opportunities your competitors have likely missed.

Consider the user’s prompt: “Our product is a [Product Description]. List 5 completely different industries or user groups we haven’t targeted yet. For each, describe how they would ‘Put our product to another use’.” This is powerful because it demands both breadth and depth. It’s not just asking for a list of industries; it’s asking for a creative application within each. Let’s say your product is a high-end, insulated water bottle. A generic brainstorm might suggest targeting hikers or gym-goers. But a well-structured prompt could yield:

Theatrical Prop Department: “They could use it as a believable, non-perishable ‘ration’ or ‘elixir’ prop that maintains its temperature for long shoots, adding a layer of realism for actors in period or fantasy pieces.”
Scientific Field Research: “Biologists collecting sensitive soil or water samples could use its insulated, sterile properties to maintain sample integrity during transport from remote locations back to the lab.”

This is a golden nugget of experience: the most valuable insights come from prompts that force a change in context. Don’t just ask for new users; ask how a completely different context would repurpose your item’s core physical properties.

The Power of Elimination: Finding Simplicity in Subtraction

In business, we’re conditioned to add: more features, more steps, more options. But often, the path to a superior user experience and higher profitability is through ruthless subtraction. The “Eliminate” principle challenges you to remove a core component of your product or service and then ask, “Is it still valuable?” This isn’t about cost-cutting; it’s about value-streamlining. It forces you to identify what is essential versus what is merely habitual.

The prompt, “Analyze [Our Service Process]. What steps could we completely eliminate without sacrificing quality?” is a direct assault on organizational bloat. Imagine you run a SaaS company with a 5-step onboarding process. A typical analysis might look for ways to make each step faster. An elimination-focused prompt forces a more fundamental question:

Can we eliminate the “manual account verification” step and automate it entirely with an API?
Can we eliminate the “welcome email sequence” by embedding all necessary tutorials directly into the user interface on first login?
Can we eliminate the “initial setup call” by creating a more intuitive, guided setup wizard?

The goal is to get to the absolute minimum number of steps required for the customer to achieve their “first moment of success” with your service. Every other step is a potential point of friction and a candidate for elimination.

The Power of Reversal: Flipping the Script for Breakthrough Ideas

Reversing a process is one of the most disorienting—and therefore effective—brainstorming techniques. We get so locked into the linear flow of “Step A leads to Step B” that we never consider what happens if we start with B and work backward. This method is exceptional for uncovering hidden inefficiencies and discovering entirely new business models. It forces you to see the process from the customer’s perspective, which is often the reverse of your internal operational flow.

Consider the second part of the user’s example prompt: “Now, reverse the entire process from end to start. What new opportunities or problems does this reveal?” Let’s apply this to a common service: a restaurant’s order-to-delivery process.

Standard Process: Customer places order -> Kitchen receives order -> Kitchen prepares food -> Food is packaged -> Food is delivered to customer.
Reversed Process: Customer receives food -> Food is packaged -> Food is prepared -> Kitchen receives order -> Customer places order.

By analyzing this reversed flow, you immediately uncover new questions. “How can we make the ‘receiving food’ step better? What if the packaging happened before the cooking to save time? What if the customer could place their order while the food is being prepared based on predictive analytics?” This reversal reveals that the biggest bottleneck isn’t the cooking, but the handoff between the customer’s decision and the kitchen’s action. This insight might lead to a “predictive ordering” app that suggests meals based on a user’s historical patterns, effectively reversing the traditional trigger for placing an order. This is how you find innovation—not by looking at the same path harder, but by walking it in reverse.

Advanced Prompting: Combining SCAMPER with Other Creative Frameworks

You’ve mastered the basic SCAMPER prompts. You can substitute components and reverse processes with the best of them. But what happens when you need to generate ideas that aren’t just novel, but fundamentally sound and strategically viable? This is where most brainstorming sessions hit a wall. You have a list of creative variations, but no way to filter them for deep-rooted value or critical weaknesses.

The solution isn’t a better framework; it’s a combination of frameworks. By layering SCAMPER with other powerful mental models, you can instruct ChatGPT to act as both a creative engine and a strategic analyst. This creates a powerful “mega-prompt” that generates ideas and immediately stress-tests them against fundamental truths or the harsh realities of the market.

SCAMPER + First Principles Thinking: The Deconstruction Engine

First Principles Thinking, popularized by Elon Musk, is the practice of breaking down complex problems into their most basic, fundamental truths and then reasoning up from there. When you combine this with SCAMPER, you force the AI to stop pattern-matching based on existing solutions. Instead, it must first understand the core physics of the problem before it begins to creatively manipulate the components.

This two-step process is the key to avoiding superficial innovation. It prevents you from just putting a new coat of paint on an old idea. Instead, you build something new from the ground up, ensuring it’s based on core user needs or market realities, not just industry conventions.

The Prompt Example:

First, break down [The Problem] to its fundamental truths. Then, using the SCAMPER framework, generate 5 innovative solutions based on those core principles.

Let’s say you’re tackling the problem of “long commutes.” A generic SCAMPER prompt might suggest Substituting a car for a train. But a First Principles + SCAMPER prompt forces a deeper analysis:

Fundamental Truths: A commute is about moving a person’s body from point A to point B over a distance, constrained by time, energy, and physics. It’s not about “cars” or “roads”—those are existing solutions.
SCAMPER Variations:
- Combine: What if we combine the commute with a primary activity like work or sleep? (Leads to autonomous mobile offices/pods).
- Eliminate: What if we eliminate the need for physical travel altogether for certain tasks? (Leads to advanced telepresence robotics).
- Reverse: What if the destination comes to you? (Leads to modular, mobile workspaces that relocate based on team needs).

This approach generates solutions that are orders of magnitude more innovative because they aren’t constrained by the existing mental model of “transportation.”

SCAMPER + Role-Playing: The Reality Check

The biggest danger in any brainstorming session is falling in love with your own ideas. A creative idea is only good if it can survive contact with the real world. Role-playing is a powerful technique to inject critical feedback directly into the ideation process. By assigning ChatGPT a specific persona, you force it to adopt a particular mindset, complete with built-in biases and objectives.

This is not just about asking for “constructive criticism.” It’s about simulating the exact type of scrutiny your idea will face from investors, customers, or competitors. A “skeptical venture capitalist” will look for market size and defensibility. A “pragmatic engineer” will look for technical feasibility. A “jaded customer” will look for immediate personal value.

The Prompt Example:

Act as a skeptical venture capitalist. Using the SCAMPER method, analyze my business idea [Idea Description] and challenge each variation you generate with a potential flaw or market obstacle.

Imagine your idea is a “smart reusable water bottle that tracks hydration.” A standard SCAMPER might suggest Adapting it for different sports. The role-playing prompt, however, yields a much more valuable output:

VC: “Okay, let’s Adapt this for the medical field for elderly patients. Flaw: The FDA approval process for a ‘medical device’ is a capital-intensive, multi-year nightmare. The compliance costs would kill your startup before you sell a single unit.”
VC: “Let’s Combine it with a subscription service for electrolyte packets. Flaw: Customer acquisition cost for a physical product is already high. Adding a recurring revenue model for a low-margin consumable creates a logistical and marketing beast. You’d need massive scale to make the economics work.”

Golden Nugget: The most powerful role-play prompts include a specific objective for the persona. Instead of just “act as a skeptic,” try “act as a skeptic whose primary goal is to find the one reason this idea would fail to secure a Series A investment.” This gives the AI a clear, high-stakes directive.

By using these combined frameworks, you elevate your interaction with AI from simple idea generation to a sophisticated strategic dialogue. You get ideas that are not only creative but also resilient, well-founded, and ready for real-world validation.

Case Study: A Live Brainstorming Session with SCAMPER & ChatGPT

Let’s move from theory to practice. The true power of AI-assisted brainstorming becomes clear when you’re staring down a real business challenge with a blank page and a deadline. To demonstrate this, we’ll walk through a live session for a common, high-stakes problem: a beloved local bookstore is struggling to attract younger customers (Gen Z and younger millennials).

This isn’t a hypothetical exercise. This is a transcript of the exact prompts used and the AI’s responses, showing you how to transform a vague challenge into a concrete, innovative action plan using the SCAMPER method. You’ll see how each prompt builds on the last, creating a powerful, iterative creative process.

The Challenge: Revitalizing “The Dusty Quill” Bookstore

The Dusty Quill is a community institution. It has creaky floors, a resident cat, and the best selection of classic literature in town. But its average customer age is 65+, and foot traffic is dwindling. The owner, a passionate reader herself, wants to create a space that feels just as magical to a 20-year-old as it does to a 70-year-old, without losing its soul.

Our goal is to use SCAMPER to generate at least 15-20 fresh, actionable ideas. We’ll treat ChatGPT not as a magic 8-ball, but as a tireless, creative partner.

The AI-Powered SCAMPER Process: A Step-by-Step Transcript

We start by giving ChatGPT a clear role and context. This is a crucial first step that primes the AI to provide relevant, high-quality responses.

Initial Prompt (Setting the Stage):

Act as a creative strategist and business innovation expert. Your specialty is helping traditional businesses adapt to new markets. We are brainstorming for a local, independent bookstore called “The Dusty Quill.” The store is struggling to attract customers under 35. Your task is to help me generate innovative ideas using the SCAMPER framework. For each letter, provide 3 distinct, actionable ideas. Let’s start with ‘S’.